Do you ever just "freeze"?

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I just did, after feeling a bout of anger. I lay down, with my body facing more towards the left and my head turned over left. I had my right hand in a fist with the thumb sticking out and it was placed on the ride side of my neck, the thumb stretching down and curling a little around the neck. My left hand was also in a fist, a closed fist, and was bent up against the wall. My left leg was bent underneath this position, while my right leg was straight. I felt fatigue and pain in my left calf and knee, but they were nothing to respond to. It was like the fatigue and pain were simply abstractions, concepts floating in space. All during this, I felt a quiet fury simmering in my chest, which still simmers even after I have got out of that position.

Not from emotions. I can lose awareness of things and "lock up".

I did when I was scared once. I froze where I was standing and began screaming.

My brain "freezes" when I'm overwhelmed (which is very often). It's like it refuses to think of certain things and solve problems. It just "freezes", I feel incapacitated and then sometimes shut down. During those moments I often feel like I want to cry/scream/hit myself in the head/give up/verbalize my thoughts but it's like I can't translate my thoughts into words and therefore I don't say or do anything but instead just sit down and sort of zone out. That's the sort of "freezing" that often happens to me but I'm guessing that's not really what you meant.

I get the "deer in the headlights" thing more often than I'd like.

When I am overwhelmed or confused.

Yeah. I freeze momentarily all the time. Usually upon entering a room or hearing a sudden noise. But sometimes for no real reason.

Sometimes with panic attacks(much of the time related to PTSD) that kinda sucks......being stuck because my body seriously will not work. Its like that would be great if i was actually in a bad situation not.

Also being in a wal-mart or grocery store for too long seems to temporarily fry my brain....makes me like one step above a drooling vegtable but not exactly the same thing as freezing like unable to move.

Yep, that happens to me somewhat often. Usually I try to just distract myself with something in those situations, a passive activity of some sort like watching a TV show, but it doesn't always help.

Also, when I was little, my mom said sometimes I would just freeze and not do anything for an extended period of time. Just thinking about this reminded me, I would repetitively slide down the slide, climb back up, and repeat this on the playground every morning. And one morning the teacher came and rang the bell for everyone to come inside, and I slid down one more time and then just didn't move. My mom was waiting for me to go inside before driving off so she came and tried to convince me to go in. The teacher came out as well and both were trying to coax me inside at this point. I still just sat totally unresponsive, staring blankly ahead, and not moving from my position.

My mom said it took 5 whole minutes before I finally, without responding, slid myself off the slide, turned and walked into the building, seemingly of my own accord and nothing to do with their attempts to convince me to do so.

I freeze when I'm socially stressed or feel under attack during a conversation. If it's a conversation, I wind up sort of staring into space and feel tunnel-vision or sort of like I'm not in my body, and I can't focus on what the other person is saying anymore. But I'm aware that I'm not behaving appropriately and that makes it worse. I used to think it was a panic attack but the symptoms of that don't really fit. Just recently I was reading an adult with autism describe these "vanishing" feelings and it was a huge epiphany for me to realize that what she was describing was exactly what I had been experiencing for years, maybe since childhood, but never knew how to explain it to people.

I remember once in college I froze at a party (I got scared about interacting-- there were too many people I didn't know) and I wound up sitting on the steps far away from the group, but I could still SEE the group, and I just sat there for probably an hour and I felt so ashamed and awful but I could not move, even just to leave the party. I really did feel like I was immobilized. Eventually a kind-hearted young lady came over to ask me if I was okay, and I was so embarrassed by her acknowledging how I was behaving that I managed to speak to her, and I remember telling her that I was having a bad acid trip because in the context of that party I knew it would be believable and an acceptable explanation for my behavior. (It was, and she patted me on the back and left me alone.) Eventually, after a really really agonizingly long time, I regained the ability to move and I quietly snuck out of the party and made my way back to my apartment and safety.

Edited to add: and yeah, I have that "simmering" feeling too... angry or burning, adrenaline... probably fight-or-flight response.

Disclaimer: I don't think this is what the OP is talking about it sounds closer to what some other people have mentioned in this thread.

I freeze when I'm overwhelmed by powerful emotions especially fear or embarrassment. What happens is these powerful emotions will take up such a large space in my brain that I'll have no resources left over to even focus on my own movements. If I'm walking I'll stop dead in my tracks because I'm too overwhelmed/pre-occupied to even do something as simple as walking. It probably looks like I'm temporarily losing consciousness but I'm really just paralyzed. It doesn't matter when the source of the emotion came from it could be from today or 10 years ago it just has to enter my mind and push itself into the center.

It just happens and I'm usually helpless to stop it until someone "awakens" me.

Happens to me a lot. Hard to explain to NT's.

Sometimes I do - it's usually when I'm walking down a sidewalk or something on my college campus and someone comes towards me on a skateboard or a bike. I also tend to freeze when someone's pressuring me to go do something, and I'm not sure I should.

If I step near a brown snake, sure.

That's the best thing to do, as they'll sliver away from you. No need to make a fuss, as they might see you as worth biting.

Someone mentioned freezing when under social stress, and this is me to a "T". The last time this happened was also just a few weeks ago for me, and it was a severe episode. There's a park I sit in, and this woman who regularly walks her dogs there sat down and started chatting because she knows another person who talks to me there. He then left us talking..... Well, this woman is intense. She's a LOT to deal with. Never stops talking, loud, nagging voice, and I found myself starting to feel more and more overwhelmed.

At first I was trying to do what I usually do -- nod and smile and make a few responses "like a normal person." But she continued to talk and I got more and more shut down.

Why did I not just physically move my body, get up, and walk away, saying "Well that was nice but I gotta go, bye bye!" ??

I don't know. I just do not even know. I don't know why I couldn't move, couldn't find the words to bring the "conversation" to a close or find a reason to just leave. I wanted to leave and go home, but I was frozen. I just sat there with this woman's voice bombarding me. It's like I completely forgot I had any choice in the matter.

I started to feel faint and dizzy, like not enough blood was getting to my head. The park started spinning, seriously. I managed to splutter out the words "Uh, hold on a minute, I don't feel well...." She kept on talking.

Finally after quite honestly about three hours -- yes, THREE HOURS -- I looked at my watch and found a way to get up and say I've got to home now. It was a superhuman effort just to do that. She completely had this affect on me that made me that "deer caught in the headlights" thing. I honestly do not know WHY I couldn't manage to get away from her earlier, I was just truly sort of "shocked" into just sitting there.

I later learned from others that she has some mental health problems and isn't your average person, in that sense, to start with. So, one person with mental issues, in a bit of a manic state, bombarding another person who has autism issues and poor executive functioning/bad at transitions -- not a good combination.